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PUBLICATIONS OP THE CONNECTICUT SOCIETY OF THE ORDER 
OF THE FOUNDERS AND PATRIOTS OF AMERICA'"" 



No. 4 



A Forgotten Connecticut 

Patriot 



BY 



COIv. EDWARD EVERETT SILI, 



/« 



NEW HAVEN, CONN., A.D. 1901 



Zci oA 



YYllTyx 



Gitb 

The Society 

{>fcC 16 (til 



The Order of the Founders and 
Patriots of America 



The Order of the Founders and Patriots of America 
was incorporated in the city of New York, March i8, 1896. 
The objects for which it was established are indicated in the 
second article of the Constitution, as follows : 

1. To bring together and associate men whose ancestors 
struggled together for life and liberty, home and happiness, in 
this land, when it was a new and unknown country, and whose 
line of descent from them comes through patriots who sustained 
the colonies in the struggle for independence in the Revolu- 
tionary War. 

2. To teach reverent regard for the names and history, 
character and perseverance, deeds and heroism, of the founders 
of this country and their patriotic descendants. 

3. To inculcate patriotism in the Associates and their 
descendants. 

4. To discover, collect and preserve records, documents, 
manuscripts, monuments and history relating to the first 
colonists, their ancestors and descendants. 

5. To commemorate and celebrate events in the history of 
the Colonies and the Republic. 

6. Other historical and patriotic purposes. 



The Connecticut Society of the Order of the 
Founders and Patriots of America was organized May 
9, 1896. The following are the Charter Associates of the 
Society : 

Maj. Frank William Mix, 
Charles Mather Glazier, 
John Emery Morris, 
Francis Durando Nichols, 
James Emery Brooks, 
Jonathan Flynt Morris, 
William Charles Russell, 
Col. Edward Everett Sill, 
Col. Charles Alexander Jewell. 



OFFICERS OF THE CONNECTICUT SOCIETY 



I 900-1 901 



REV. JOHN GAYLORD DAVENPORT, D.D., Governor, Waterbury 
COI/. EDWARD EVERETT SILL, Dkputy Governor, New Haven 
WILLIAM CHARLES RUSSELL, Secretary, 
ERNEST BRADFORD ELLSWORTH, Treasurer, 
SYLVESTER CLARK DUNHAM, State Attorney, 
GEORGE FRANKLIN NEWCOMB, Registrar, . 
HENRY BALDWIN, Historian, .... 
REV. DRYDEN WILLIAM PHELPS, Chapi^ain, . 



Hartford 

Hartford 

Hartford 

New Haven 

New Haven 

New Haven 



WILLIAM FRANCIS JOSEPH BOARDMAN, Geneai<ogisT, Hartford 



COUNCILORS 

{Three Years) 

THOMAS JEFFERSON BOARDMAN, . 
MAJOR GEORGE WHITE TUCKER, . 
HON. THEODORE SEDGWICK GOLD, 



Hartford 

Waterbury 

West Cornwall 



{Two Years) 

JOHN DWIGHT PARKER, Hartford 

COL. CHARLES ALEXANDER JEWELL, . . . Hartford 

ELI MIX, New Haven 

{One Year) 

GEORGE FRANKLIN NEWCOMB, New Haven 

WILLIAM NEWTON PARKER, New Haven 

HON. JAMES DUDLEY DEWELL New Haven 



A Forgotten Connecticut 

Patriot 



AN ADDRESS AT A MEETING OF THE 
CONNECTICUT SOCIETY OF THE ORDER 
OF THE FOUNDERS AND PATRIOTS OF 
AMERICA, SEPTEMBER 20, A.D. 1900 . . . 



BY 



COIv. EDWARD EVERETT SILI. 






THE TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR COMPANY, 

NEW HAVEN, CONN. 



•1 



4 

A FORGOTTEN CONNECTICUT PATRIOT. 






^ 



In recent study of the records of Old Lyme, Con- 
necticut, I was impressed witli a new sense of our 
debt of remembrance and gratitude to some of the 
humbler builders of our nation without whose service 
the work of the greater leaders would have come to 
naught. It was the common touch of the plain peo- 
ple through the homes, the town-meeting and the 
pastorate which gave the colonial fathers hopeful con- 
ditions and opportunity. In their days the pastor of 
the local church and parish was the mentor and guide 
not alone in the paths of religion, but in the school 
and other walks of secular and civil life. Honored 
and esteemed for his personal virtues of character and 
scholarship ; living in a time when books were few 
but deeply studied and newspapers almost unknown 
he easily became the leader of his people. He knew 
they, as well as he, had inherited the word and tradi- 
tion of English natural and chartered rights of per- 
sonal liberty, however obscured and fettered in the old 
land by kingly and ecclesiastical tyranny. In govern- 
mental theory they were not altogether republicans 
but rather satisfied monarchists, so long as their rights 
were not assailed. Their inherited loyalty was to the 
kingly person of the monarch rather than to assumed 
prerogative or the corruptions and tyranny of his 
court or ministry. They knew that at Marston Moor 
had been decided in^uegative the right of an English 



king to tax and govern in his royal name. They 
wished him to reign rather than rule. They had 
never forgotten the story of Runnymede. From the 
lips of their fathers they had heard personal recollec- 
tions of Naseby, Dunbar and Worcester and revered 
the memory of that great constructive statesman and 
soldier who, with his compatriots, on those and other 
fields, had wrought righteousness for the people of 
England. With Milton they felt— '' Our liberty is 
not Caesar's ; it is a blessing we have received from 
God himself ; it is what we are born to." 

In the middle of the eighteenth century the pastor 
of the First Church of Christ at Old Lyme, Connecti- 
cut, was Reverend Stephen Johnson, and after prelude 
of English and colonial life and conditions I would 
seek to recall some of his patriotic services. 

He was a descendant of some of those planters in 
the wilderness, who '' first sat down at New Haven " 
and later in the prevailing migratory spirit removed 
to Newark and Elizabethtown, New Jersey. His 
parents were Nathaniel and Sarah (Ogden) Johnson of 
Newark, where he was born May 17, 1724. He gradu- 
ated at Yale College in. 1743 ; pursued a course of 
study in Divinity ; on July 26, 1744, he married Eliza- 
beth, daughter of William and Sarah (Dunbar) Diodati, 
and on December 10, 1746, was ordained to the pas- 
torate of the church at Old Lyme where he had an 
unbroken ministry of forty years. His field of useful- 
ness was never liounded by his local parish. With 
earnest purpose his whole life was given to the relig- 
ious, educational, social and political welfare of the 
people of the colony of Connecticut. In 1773 ^^ ^^^ 



elected a Fellow of tlie Corporation of Yale College, 
wliicli office lie held until liis death. 

William Diodati, his wife's father, was a scion of an 
old and illustrious Italian family some of whom in the 
time of the Reformation adhered to the Protestant faith 
with John Calvin and later as exiles took up their 
home in England. Early in the eighteenth century 
William Diodati established himself as a merchant in 
New Haven. He was a man of native as well as 
acquired traits of culture, evidenced among other 
things by his large library, nearly one hundred choice 
volumes of which were by his will bequeathed to Mr. 
Johnson. 

At their deaths Mr. and Mrs. Diodati were interred 
in the ancient burial ground on the Old Green, where 
with scores of other of the early fathers and mothers 
of New Haven they were allowed to rest in peace 
until that unfortunate day of 182 1 when unpatriotic 
if not unfilial hands so leveled and obliterated their 
graves that no one now knows their place of burial. 

On assuming the Lyme pastorate Mr. Johnson 
became the successor to Reverend Jonathan Parsons, 
who went from there to the Presbyterian church at 
Newburyport, Mass. Mr. Parsons was the warm 
friend of the noted evangelist George Whitefield, who 
died at Parsons' house in 1770 and was buried beneath 
his pulpit. A son of Mr. Parsons, a young lawyer, 
who had remained in the vicinity of Old Lyme, after- 
ward became the distinguished soldier Major General 
Samuel Holden Parsons, whom Washington trusted 
and who commanded a large number of the Connecti- 
cut troops in the Revolution. 



-10 — 



In tracing the life of a New England colonist we 
almost of necessity find his roots of being in English 
soil. There, as everywhere, religious, political, social 
and physical conditions were chief forces in the mak- 
ing of public and private character. 

To understand the development of our political 
institutions we must deeply know the lives of those 
by whom they were wrought. In the present belated 
but fortunate renascence of investigation into the 
foreign and domestic foundations of our history we 
are developing a quickened and more intelligent love 
of country and institutions. Priceless as are some of 
the records which have been preserved, it is greatly 
to be regretted that the fathers of the early wilderness 
had not clearer vision of the needs of the future and 
studiously made and preserved more written records 
of state, people and families — their faiths and expe- 
riences. There is much interest in thought of the tenac- 
ity with which the colonists maintained and exercised 
the right of popular assembly for the discussion of 
grievances. The town-meeting was the forum where, 
on questions of public or local interest, the plain and 
humble were peers of the great. They had early 
learned that the tenure of their rights was at any 
time liable to assault. Repeatedly, by force or indi- 
rection, had crown or ministry, from the earliest set- 
tlements to the opening of the Revolution, attempted 
to seize or nullify their charters lest too much of 
rights had been granted the people. As early as 
April 28, 1634, Charles I. had issued his Patent to a 
Commission of twelve dignitaries of church and state 
with the Archbishop of Canterbury at its head, 



— II — 

designed to annul the charters already given the 
American colonists by specifically granting to such 
Commission, or any five of them, full power of legisla- 
tion and of the purse, the sword, the regulation of 
religious worship, the disposal of property, of taxa- 
tion and commerce, with absolute power of imprison- 
ment or of life and death over the individual. 

Before continuing this sketch of Stephen Johnson, 
which from lack of records must be brief as to his 
private and personal life and later will mainly relate 
to his patriotic public service in opposition to the 
British Stamp Act, permit as matter of historical con- 
tinuity a brief discussion of the history and character 
of the New England colonists, with also a glance at 
the French and English struggle for this continent, 
all of which culminated in the American Revolution. 
A visible and unbroken chain reaches from Jamestown 
and Plymouth Rock to the Declaration of Independ- 
ence. 

More than twenty-five years before Elizabeth came 
to her throne six thousand copies of Tyndale's version 
of the New Testament, printed in Germany, had been 
scattered through England. 

Discoveries by land and sea had opened the insular 
mind to a glimpse of the vastness of the outer world 
with its numbers of people, their varied religions, laws 
and customs. Hakluyt's " Divers Voyages " in its 
black-letter text was already in many libraries. While 
this stimulated curiosity, leading to more voyages of 
daring and enterprise to open pathways of future 
commerce, there still remained other great glories to 
come to the reign of Elizabeth in the development of 
literature. 



— 12 — 

Many of our colonial fathers Had been born in tbis 
renewed sunlight of knowledge. Drayton and Daniel 
had both in verse told of their country's struggles for 
national existence and freedom. The hands of some 
of our colonists had in the year 1590 touched the 
covers of the first print of Edmund Spenser's " Faerie 
Queene," written while he was an exiled colonist. 
Like a sparkling stream bursting from the side of a 
mountain came this rich poem of Imagination whose 
freshening effect has never been lost. Others of the 
fathers might and doubtless had looked upon Shaks- 
peare's living face and on the boards of the Globe 
Theatre at South wark or at Blackfriars, have enjoyed 
the fun of '* The Taming of the Shrew," and been 
thrilled with the storms of passion battling in the 
soul of Lear — for not every educated Puritan was 
averse to the Drama. 

As if reserved for a day of need, to England was 
born early in the seventeenth century John Milton, 
" the poet, the statesman, the philosopher, the glory of 
English literature, the champion and the martyr of 
English liberty." 

As a fact of literature as well as sidelight upon the 
representative Puritan character, it is interesting to 
recall that Milton's first published verse were the lines 
entitled " An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic 
Poet, W. Shakspeare," which in 1632 were printed as 
a prefix to the folio edition of Shakspeare's Plays. 
The epitaph closes with the oft-quoted words : 

" And so sepulch'red in such pomp dost lie 
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. ' ' 



—13— 

It cannot ever be profitless to ponder the momentous 
question wliicli confronted tlie Pilgrim Fathers before 
they set foot upon the Rock. Fleeing from tyranny 
they could not for their guidance look to the laws 
and a system under which they had suffered. Cut 
loose from Bngland without chart or compass of gov- 
ernment or legislation — what system should they 
adopt? They were without European political pre- 
cedent. They doubtless studied and discussed some 
partial adaptation of English laws to their extremity. 
On this question Dr. Leonard Bacon with his keen 
insight and sympathetic thought has said : " Those 
were the very laws from which they had fled ; those 
laws would subject them at once, to the King, to the 
Parliament and to the prelates in their several juris- 
dictions. The adoption of the laws of England would 
have been fatal to the object of their emigration." 

Where then could they turn ? To this queston Dr. 
Cheever gives terse answer. " They could not take 
the Roman civil law ; but they had a code in every 
man's hand in the Bible, laws given to a community 
emigrating like themselves from their native country, 
for the great purpose of maintaining in simplicity and 
purity the worship of the one true God. Like the Israel- 
ites of old, they were to be a people surrounded by 
the heathen, and intermingled among them, and need- 
ing the influence of laws framed with a special refer- 
ence to such a corrupting neighborhood and inter- 
course. Like the Hebrews also they were a free 
Republican people, and needed laws for a community 
where there was no absolute power, where there were 
no privileged classes, laws whose aims should be 



—14— 

that equal and exact justice whicli is tlie only free- 
dom." 

It is a remarkable illustration of tlie spirit of charity 
and of the illuminating mental effect of a state of 
freedom after tyranny, to see to what extent the Pil- 
grim Fathers softened and mitigated the barbarous 
character of British penal laws. Commenting upon 
this fact again Dr. Bacon remarks that " the greatest 
and boldest improvement which has been made in 
criminal jurisprudence by any one act since the dark 
ages was that which was made by our fathers when 
they determined that the judicial laws of God, as they 
were delivered by Moses, should be accounted of moral 
equity, and generally bind all offenders, and be a rule 
to all the courts." 

Let it not be forgotten that in adopting the Hebrew 
law instead of the law of England as a code of govern- 
ment for their own judicial use the colonists reduced 
to eleven in number the bloody catalogue of one hun- 
dred and fifty offenses at that time punishable, by 
Bnglish law, with death. 

Where in the history of civilization have small 
bodies of men, voluntary exiles from home to a hostile 
wilderness, been compelled to face such stern and lofty 
problems of life and duty ? Where in the annals of 
heroism are found brighter examples than among the 
early colonists of New England ? 

Finely does Sir George Otto Trevelyan say, " The 
lawgivers of the Puritan colonies had a blank parch- 
ment before them and they were equal to the task of 
ruling the lines along which the national character 
was to run." 



—IS— 

In the words of old Warton, they were men and 
women who 

" — fought God's battles and his works pursued." 

Here in New England they had known their fellow- 
exile Sir Henry Vane, the Younger, whose life and 
death were self-consecrated to liberty. After years of 
public service here he returned to England, where 
under the Restoration of the perfidious Stuarts he in 
1662 was brought to lay his head upon the block. As 
he parted his hair from the neck that the " two-handed 
engine " might have clear play he spoke, " I have kept 
a conscience void of offense till this day, and have not 
deserted the righteous cause for which I suffer." It 
was to him Milton inscribed his sonnet, the closing 
lines of which express the great ultimate principle 
involved in the colonization of America : 

— "besides to know 
Both spiritual pow'r and civil, what each means, 
What serves each, thou hast learn 'd which few 

have done : 
The bounds of either sword to thee we owe. ' ' 

Like a hard cancer, poisonous and causing prolonged 
suffering in the body-politic of England was that 
inheritance of mediaeval wrong which had been handed 
down from one kingly reign to another far into the 
seventeenth century and which in the name of religion 
was ever ready to consort with evil for purpose of 
tyranny. Whether working through Church or State 
its mission was to blast every aspiration of the peo- 
ple, by centralizing civil and ecclesiastical authority 
in the hands of the few for the holy cause of " the 



— 16— 

divine riglit of kings " and " the glory of God." 
Warping every movement of learning or commerce to 
kingly and priestly ends, it followed across the seas 
every merchant-adventurer or trembling exile, telling 
him " the king's arm is long and reaches far." The 
spirit of successive crowns if put in words would have 
said to the colonists, " So long as jt^ou contribute to 
us revenues nearly up to the measure of our greed you 
may do as you will in other matters." Royal revenues 
and commercial supremacy were the dominant thought. 
In the minds of the Stuarts and the Brunswicks 
colonists were sheep to be shorn. Neither in theory 
nor practice was there parental feeling on the part of 
the crown until after the Revolution of 1688, and but 
little then. The various Navigation Acts from 1651 
to 1696 were framed for the purpose of exploiting 
trade for the benefit of England, but the rivalries and 
jealousies of France later introduced other burning 
questions than those of trade alone. The helpless 
colonists felt the galling yoke and from time to time 
made spirited protest, but the system was too profit- 
able to corrupt courtiers and ministers for a change. 
Fearful of the imposition of greater burdens they some- 
times carried forbearance beyond the point of virtue. 
Unconsciously, however, they were being schooled 
into new and higher views of empire. 

In tracing the slow development of principles of 
religious and civil liberty there must be kept in mind 
the inevitable state of public and private morals when 
centralized despotism in varied forms was appealing 
to the baser elements of motive through greed of gold 
and lust of dominion. Absolutism was then essential 



—17— 

to both means and ends. In tlie name of religion the 
churcli was an ecclesiastical machine ready as changed 
circumstances and relations made politic to be either 
the professed friend, the hostile rival, or by masked 
intrigue " craftily outwitting her perjured coadjutor," 
the state, and invariably working in the interest of 
spiritual and intellectual tyranny. 

The story of the Puritan exodus from oppression is 
a familiar one. It was in that time of unrest when 
quaint George Herbert, himself not a Puritan, in his 
pious musings upon " The Church Militant " wrote : 

' ' Religion stands on tiptoe in our land 
Ready to pass to the American strand." 

Religious and political influences, whether of des- 
potism or freedom, are slow in working out their ulti- 
mate results. In our appreciation of the work of the 
fathers here it is not needed to lose sight of their early 
narrowness of mental environment and vision. They 
were simply transplanted Englishmen who before 
their migration had been surrounded by insular preju- 
dices and blindness. Though having in advance of 
their time the living germ of a conception of their 
rights as freemen, they had been fettered by the hard 
irons of power. Their migration had been their pro- 
test. Through self-imposed exile they sought free- 
dom from wrong. Their glory lies in the fact that 
with each new revelation of truth their souls rose to a 
higher conception of the duties and dignity of freemen. 
With Edward Johnson they believed " The Lord Christ 
intends to achieve greater matters by this little hand- 
ful than the world is aware of." At the outset they 



— 18— 

did not clearly understand all the rights of others and 
were repressive. Their spirit was a heritage of Eng- 
lish environment and education requiring time and 
growth of better conditions to supplant. We know 
that in Massachusetts and Connecticut in the early- 
days " none but church members could vote or hold 
office. In other words, the deputies to the General 
Court were deputies of churches and the Governor and 
Magistrates were church members elected by church 
members. Church and State were not united ; they 
were identified. A majority of the people, including 
men of wealth, ability and character, were deprived of 
their rights because they were not church-members." 

Parkman, in his terse and brilliant manner, says : 
" New England Protestantism appealed to Liberty ; 
then closed the door against her. On a stock of free- 
dom she grafted a scion of despotism ; yet the vital 
juices of the root penetrated at last to the uppermost 
branches, and nourished them to an irrepressible 
strength and expansion." 

The strongest of the foundations and guaranties of 
English constitutional rights had been The Charter 
of Liberties of Henry I. at his coronation, A. D. iioo, 
wherein he acknowledged the limitations of royal 
power and embodied many of the jewels of later 
Magna Charta. In their time followed the two Char- 
ters of Stephen, that of Henry II., with the Consti- 
tutions of Clarendon, A. D. 1164, and the various 
Assizes of that century until, as a continuous stream 
constantly fed, they all, in A. D. 12 15, emptied into 
the broad glories of Magna Charta. It was Chatham 
who said, " Those iron barons . . . were the guardians 



—19— 

of tlie people ; and three words of tlieir barbarous 
Latin, nullus liber homo, are worth all the classics." 
Contrasting the enlargement of the bounds of personal 
freedom in America and England, we may note that 
although present in Kngland since the fourteenth cen- 
tury, men of the Jewish race there, until 1832, had no 
political rights, and even then until 1845 were de- 
barred any civil, military or corporate offices, and not 
until 1846 was the public exercise of their religion 
legalized. 

We should judge men and faiths by their higher 
rather than their lower development and expression. 
By this standard the Puritan need not be ashamed. 
In his geographical isolation he gradually arose to a 
freer comprehension and expression of the rights of 
man. The first cycle of freedom in America renewed 
and advanced the guaranties of constitutional rights 
on Bnglish soil everywhere. Pascal, in one of his let- 
ters, says : " The Jesuits have obtained a papal decree 
condemning Galileo's doctrine about the motion of the 
earth. It is all in vain. If the world is really turn- 
ing round, all mankind together will not be able to 
keep it from turning or to keep themselves from turn- 
ing with it." 

From the close of the reign of Elizabeth nearly all 
Europe had been a battle ground of kingly jealousies, 
or wars of religious hate. In England the period of 
the Renascence was slowly merging into that of Puri- 
tanism, and was for the time the main current of Eng- 
land and the world's progress. With the Bible in its 
hand Puritanism was the first power to recognize and 
make an initial principle of the collective grandeur of 



-20 — 



the people. It liad welcomed tlie revival of letters, 
and the old University of Cambridge was already giv- 
ing proof that blended convictions of pure religion 
and cultured learning were the highest means of 
power. One of the most interesting and valuable 
features of American colonial life in both the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries was that of the educa- 
tional development of the people. The Puritan fathers 
did not believe ignorance to be the mother of devotion 
in either religious or civil life. In the colonial laws 
of 1647 we find : " To the end that learning may not 
be buried in the graves of our fathers, it is ordered 
in all the Puritan colonies that every township, after 
the Lord has increased them to the number of fifty 
households, shall appoint one to teach all children to 
write and read ; and when any town shall increase to 
the number of one hundred families, they shall set up 
a grammar-school, the master thereof to be able to 
instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for 
the university ; provided that if any town neglect 
the performance hereof above one year, that every 
such town shall pay five pounds to the next school, 
till they shall perform the order." 

In the year 1701 Harvard College had been planted 
for nearly three-fourths of a century and was already 
a waxing light of learning. Yale was then a newly 
planted seed in the wilderness, its roots asking of the 
soil the best it could give of the elements of growth 
and strength, until now, like Harvard, she is a great 
banyan tree, beneath whose sheltering branches thou- 
sands of her sons daily gather. To these universities 
and their offspring of kindred institutions and men 



-21- 



we point as ultimate results and illustrations of seven- 
teentli century Puritanism. In an era of few news- 
papers and schools ; when the majority of population 
were scattered; when industry and thrift were the 
requirements of daily life and an idler was the 
deserved object of ridicule or scorn ; when the homely 
virtues were cherished as indispensable to happiness 
and the upbuilding of character ; when it was deeply 
recognized that plain living with high thinking upon 
serious questions of religious and political duty were 
of the essentials of life, the intellectual character of 
the people began to show signs of growth. For the 
first half of the eighteenth century the presence of 
hostile France on her borders was a standing menace 
and drain upon the industries of New England, whereby 
her educational interests also suffered. 

The almost inextricable confusion of motives and 
events in the relations of England and France, both 
upon the continent of Europe and in America during 
the greater part of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, make it difficult to form a satisfactory con- 
clusion as to the validity of the rival claims of either. 
Justin Winsor says : " In considering the respective 
claims of the English and French to North America, 
it must be remembered that the conflict of rights is 
not only one on identical lines arising from discovery, 
but also one on opposed lines arising from different 
conceptions of the rights of discovery. The claims 
are also represented by contrary methods and pur- 
poses in enforcing them." 

The prior occupancy of the lands by the Indians 
was a third factor of the problem. The early Eng- 



-22- 



lisli colonists or traders by their charters or patents 
got a jurisdiction over, but no established fee in the 
lands conveyed them by the crown. They admitted 
that permanent occupation or possession could only 
follow extinguishment of the native title by purchase 
or treaty. The French claimed right of possession 
as against the native occupant, but cared less for the 
territory than for the privilege of controlling the fur 
trade in ecclesiastical and commercial interests. At 
the same time, as occasion demanded, the French 
seized the lands of the Indians without thought of 
recompense. It was not strange that these diverse 
policies puzzled the native occupant, causing a 
wavering or divided allegiance, some preferring the 
French and others the English without constancy to 
either. The Dutch and the English as their succes- 
sors early learned that the Iroquois, in their marvel- 
ous governmental league and power, were the recog- 
nized leaders of the native tribes of this continent, and 
had cultivated and propitiated them while the French 
unwisely incurred their enmity. The English formed 
alliance with the Iroquois, and as the latter, who 
were a race of the highest martial qualities, made 
conquest of the other native tribes and territory, 
the English turned these conquests to their own 
advantage by the assumption that the Iroquois con- 
quests under their alliances gave supremacy to Eng- 
lish jurisdiction and possession. This English assump- 
tion, however, remained a point of dissent on [the part 
of France down to the Quebec Act of 1774. 

In the middle of the eighteenth century came that 
tremendous epoch of history, the Seven Years' War, 



—23— 

which involved both Europe and America in its issue. 
In the words of Trevelyan : " Problems had long 
been ripe for solution which concerned not only the 
British Kingdom, but all the civilized and almost the 
whole of the inhabited world. Whether France or 
England was to rule in India ; whether the French 
manners, language or institutions, or the English, 
were to prevail over the immense continent of North 
America ; whether Germany was to have a national 
existence ; whether Spain was to monopolize the 
commerce of the tropics ; who was to command the 
ocean ; who was to be dominant in the islands of the 
Caribbean Sea ; what power was to possess the choice 
stands for business in the great market of the globe ; 
these were only some of the issues which had to be 
decided. . . . On the i8th of May, 1756, the unofficial 
hostilities between France and England, which had 
been smoldering or blazing for the space of four 
years on the shores of the Carnatic, and along the 
valleys of the St. Lawrence, the Ohio and the Missis- 
sippi, were sanctioned and extended by an open 
declaration of war." For seven long years the 
American colonists bore the burden of the defense of 
their homes from French and savage aggression and 
in maintaining the power and prestige of the British 
crown. Enormous was the drain upon their resources 
and homes, yet all cheerfully and loyally borne. 
They knew that all the great powers of Europe were 
in a mighty death grapple. Here the statesmen, the 
scholars and the plain people could not help but 
seriously ponder the question, What does it all mean 
to us and our offspring ? After more than a century 



—24— 

of seeking freedom in tlie wilderness, are we to be 
delivered to the dominion of France with all wliicli 
that implies ? 

There is no more piteous tale in American history 
than that of the burdens, sacrifices and sufferings of 
the New England colonists on behalf of the British 
crown during the French and English wars from 1755 
to 1762, and a glimpse at the record throws in dark 
shadow the wickedness and fatuity of George III. and 
his ministry in seeking by the Stamp Act and other 
means to crush the spirit and the rights of those who 
had but just rendered such willing and unexampled 
service. 

Keeping in mind the rigors of climate, the compara- 
tive sparseness of population and the ruggedness of 
our rocky soil whence the necessaries of life must be 
dug, we can better appreciate the service and sacrifice 
of the little colony of Connecticut by the men at war 
and the women in the homes, for they alike shared the 
burdens of the field and the perils of the tomahawk 
and scalping-knife at the hand of the Frenchman's 
savage allies. In 1764 was issued from the printing- 
press of Benjamin Mecom of New Haven a pamphlet 
entitled " Reasons why the British Colonies in Amer- 
ica should not be charged with Internal Taxes by 
authority of Parliament, etc." 

Besides setting forth the arduous defense made by 
the colonists for more than fifty years preceding 1755, 
it gives a condensed summary of services to the 
crown by the colony of Connecticut from 1755 to 1762. 
"In the year 1755, when Forces were raised by the 
Northern Colonies for removing Encroachments made 



—25— 

on His Majesty's territories in America by tlie Frencli 
Connecticut raised a Thousand Men for that service, 
and also two thousand more the same year to rein- 
force the army at Lake George, then apprehended too 
weak to withstand the enemy. This number was two 
or three times the proportion of Connecticut compared 
with some other colonies concerned in that Expedi- 
tion. 

" In 1756 it raised Two Thousand five hundred men, 
which was double the number proposed by the King's 
Commander in Chief for the Colony's proportion in 
the service of that year. This was done by the 
Colony as it was supposed the Southern Colonies 
would fail of the proportion allotted for them to raise ; 
and lest the Service should suffer, it exerted itself in 
such duplicate proportion. 

" In 1757 the proportion demanded by His Majesty's 
Commander-in-Chief, for the service of that year, 
being Fourteen Hundred men, the Colony not only 
raised that number, but also, on intelligence of the 
attack on Fort William Henry, speedily sent forward 
about Five Thousand of the Militia, for the relief of 
that fortress and the protection of the country, then in 
great consternation in those parts. 

" And in 1758 an expedition was set on foot for the 
reduction of Canada, and the colonies being called 
upon by the Crown to raise as many men as the 
number of their inhabitants would admit of; and as 
it was apprehended that in case of success, an end 
would be put to the war in these parts by that year's 
campaign, Connecticut exerted beyond all former 
eff"orts, in hopes of its being the finishing stroke, and 



—26— 

accordingly agreed to raise five thousand men and 
actually had but few short of that number in the field. 
But as this important design failed of accomplish- 
ment at that time, the Colony by Royal direction, 
was called upon strenuously to exert itself in the like 
service, in 1759, and even until the end of the war. 
And as what hath been done by the Colonies, on that 
extraordinary occasion in 1758, seemed constantly to 
be made the rule of demand upon them afterwards, 
the annual requisition of the Crown proved exceeding 
heavy upon the Colony of Connecticut, for it had 
indeed exerted itself vastly beyond its ability and any 
just proportion in that year ; yet nevertheless they 
agreed to raise the number demanded in every suc- 
ceeding year of the War, being spirited, as far as pos- 
sible, to yield the strictest obedience to the King's 
command, and determined to persevere in his service 
with the utmost ejBforts." . . . 

" In these services, from the year 1755 to the year 
1762 inclusive, the expenses of the Colony over and 
above the Parliamentary grants amount to upward of 
four hundred thousand pounds ; the large arrears of 
which sum will remain a heavy, distressing burden 
upon the people for many years to come. Moreover, 
several thousands of the hardiest and most able 3^oung 
men, the hope and strength of the farmers have been 
destroyed, lost and enervated in the many distant, 
arduous campaigns during the course of this terrible 
war. . . . And although, by the success of the mili- 
tary operations in America, large and most valuable 
acquisitions have been made to the British Dominions, 
yet the Colony of Connecticut gains nothing thereby 



—2J— 

further than as it may be said to be concerned in the 
common Cause and general interest of the whole." 

With the capitulation of Montreal and the Treaty 
of Paris, February lo, 1763, whereby the French for- 
ever lost permanent foothold on this continent, the 
American colonies were jubilant. The church bells 
of New England rang out notes of victory and rejoic- 
ing and the pulpits resounded with sermons of thanks- 
giving. The voice of Stephen Johnson gave glad 
acclaim, for had not many of his parishioners faced the 
frowning battlements of Ticonderoga, seen the lilies of 
France droop in humiliating surrender at Montreal, 
swelled the fearful death-roll at Havana, and elsewhere, 
too, witnessed the alternating victories and defeats 
incident to war ? 

Amid all the anxieties of the conflict while it lasted 
had been a ferment of thought in the minds of the 
people. Will success of the British crown strengthen 
or impair our liberties which we have so dearly 
bought? After all our arduous services will the 
crown lift from us the galling tyranny of the Naviga- 
tion Acts and other devices to cripple and repress our 
trade and industries, or in arrogant consciousness of 
renewed strength will it impose new burdens upon us ? 

With bated breath as if afraid of their own thoughts 
they asked themselves the question how long their 
own endurance might last under new burdens of tax- 
ation, should they be imposed. 

On the death of George II., in 1760, came to the 
throne his grandson, George III., perhaps the worst 
of the Brunswicks. Naturally a young man of many 
good parts, he had by his mother been unwisely trained 



—28— 

to undue conceptions of prerogative. " George, be 
king " had been her constant monition. In the 
clearer perspective of history Lord Brougham thus 
depicts his character : 

" Of a narrow understanding, which no culture had 
enlarged ; of an obstinate disposition, which no educa- 
tion, perhaps, could have huraanized ; of strong feelings 
in ordinary things, and a resolute attachment to all his 
own predilections, George III. possessed much of the 
firmness of purpose which, being exhibited by men of 
contracted mind without any discrimination, and as 
pertinaciously when they are in the wrong as when 
they are in the right, lends to their characters an 
appearance of inflexible consistency, often mistaken 
for greatness of mind, and not seldom received as a 
substitute for honesty. In all that related to his 
kingly of&ce he was the slave of deep-rooted selfish- 
ness ; and no feeling of a kindly nature was ever 
allowed access to his bosom, whenever his power was 
concerned, either in its maintenance, or in the man- 
ner of exercising it. In other respects he was a man 
of amiable disposition, and few princes have been 
more exemplary in their domestic habits, or in the 
offices of private friendship. But the instant that his 
prerogative was concerned, or his bigotry interfered 
with, or his will thwarted, the most unbending pride, 
the most bitter animosity, the most calculating cold- 
ness of heart, the most unforgiving resentment, took 
possession of his whole breast, and swayed it by turns. 
The habits of friendship, the ties of blood, the dictates 
of conscience, the rules of honesty, were alike forgot- 
ten ; and the fury of the tyrant, with the resources of 



—29— 

a cunning wliich mental alienation is supposed to 
wHet, were ready to circumvent or destroy all wlio 
interposed an obstacle to tlie fierceness of unbridled 
desire." 

As a pen-picture drawn by a loyal and scholarly 
Bnglisbman, perhaps we may accept his estimate of 
character as explaining the attitude of George III. 
toward the American colonists. 

The rejoicings of the people of England and Amer- 
ica over the termination of the Seven Years' War had 
hardly ceased before George III. and his ministry 
with a fatuity bordering on madness of judgment and 
purpose began to plan new outrages upon the rights 
of the American colonists. Within two years there 
had been created sixteen new peerages with the 
unblushing purpose of making a servile majority in 
the House of Lords. 

A fortnight after the signatory powers had con- 
cluded the Treaty of Paris, Charles Townshend be- 
came First Lord of Trade, with administration of the 
colonies, and with support of the ministry inaugurated 
a new system of colonial government. Upon the plea 
that the expulsion of the French had been a great 
relief and advantage to the colonies, it was announced 
there would be no more direct requisitions by the King 
upon the Colonial Assemblies for supplies, but the 
colonies were to be taxed by Act of Parliament ; Colo- 
nial Governors and Judges were to be appointed and 
paid by the crown, who were to be supported here by 
a standing army of twenty regiments ; and the 
expenses of this force were to be largely paid by 
money wrung from the people of the colonies by Par- 



— 30— 

liamentary taxation. To their own impoverisliment 
the colonies had voluntarily voted money and supplies 
in the long contest with France, and without time to 
recuperate from the strain they were to have forced 
upon them the support of an undesired and needless 
military establishment over their own homes and 
resources. Since its conquest of Canada the crown 
had regarded that province as a military point d'^appui 
in support of its policy of enforcing its supremacy 
over all the American colonies. 

Though the retirement of France had left on this 
continent no enemy to the British arms, there still 
remained here ten regiments of troops quartered upon 
the people for their support, and later to enforce the 
secret schemes of the ministry should they be resisted. 
The old Navigation Acts of 1660 and 1663 for the pur- 
pose of exploiting British shipping and trade were to 
be rigorously enforced. 

In 1733 had been passed by Parliament the Molasses 
Act intended to restrict the trade of the Northern colo- 
nies. Though its prohibitory duties invited exten- 
sive smuggling, the Act was five times renewed by 
Parliament until 1764, when it was made perpetual. 

The home of the family is the place where the 
affections centre. The attitude of the colonists upon 
questions of government and taxation was based upon 
domestic as well as public reasons. Here in the middle 
of the eighteenth century an able-bodied man in ex- 
treme poverty was almost unknown, and equally so one 
native-born without the common rudiments of an 
education. Of such it was rarely the case that the 
head of a family did not own his house and the land 



—31— 

upon which lie lived. With him the question of 
taxation by a foreign legislative body was not one of 
shifting political expedients but a matter of public 
principle vitally related to the present welfare of his 
home and the inheritance of his children. 

The ministerial theory of colonial trade was that of 
the gambler with his loaded dice. By its various 
Acts of Trade the crown sought to oblige the colonies 
to purchase their goods in its markets, and to further 
cripple their local industries by compelling their 
exports to be carried in British bottoms with clear- 
ances for ports in England alone — a system of com- 
mercial vassalage and robbery. In April, 1764, 
George Grenville succeeded Bute as Prime Minister, 
though in the private capacity of confidential friend 
and adviser, Bute still "sat squat like toad^' at the 
ear of George III. 

On April 5th Grenville procured passage of the 
Sugar Act, imposing duties upon certain of both colo- 
nial exports and imports, to take effect on and after 
September 29, 1764. In the previous month he had 
announced his intention to introduce at the next Par- 
liament a Stamp Bill. 

In the meantime the several Agents maintained by 
the colonies to look after their general interests in 
England had received from the crown its crafty sug- 
gestion that they communicate with their respective 
governments in order that the colonies, if desirous, 
might agree upon some other method of their taxation 
for benefit of the crown. For many years the colonists 
had been politically neither blind nor deaf. They 
knew that if they gave serious official consideration to 



—32— 

tlie question and agreed upon any plan it would com- 
mit tliem to tlie principle of Parliamentary taxation of 
themselves. The prospect was viewed witli alarm in 
America, wliere tlie enforcement of tlie Acts of Trade 
was already disastrous to commerce, and when, in 
February, 1765, the proposed Stamp Bill was brought 
before Parliament by Grenville the Colonial Agents 
declined to recommend any substitute for the Bill, but 
earnestly remonstrated against it. They also pre- 
sented petitions against it from the Colonial Assem- 
blies and from London merchants interested in Amer- 
ican trade, but their petitions were refused considera- 
tion under a rule adopted by the House of Commons 
forbidding the reception of petitions on money-bills. 

The Stamp Bill passed the Commons by a vote of 
205 to 49 and the House of Lords without a division. 
During the discussion of questions relating to the 
colonies, Benjamin Franklin had for some time been 
in England watching the trend of influences and 
events. On the night after the passage of the Stamp 
Act he wrote to Charles Thomson, afterward the Sec- 
retary of the Continental Congress : " The sun of 
liberty is set ; the Americans must light the lamps of 
industry and economy." To Jared Ingersoll, Agent 
of the colony of Connecticut, then in London, he 
said, " Go home and tell your countrymen to get 
children as fast as they can," implying the inevitable 
and long struggle to come. 

At time of passage of the Stamp Act, George IIL 
was in partial retirement in one of those attacks of 
insanity to which he was subject. A Commission 
was appointed to act for the King in approval of the 



—33— 

« 

Act. It is stated as matter of fact tliat on March 2 2d 
the Act was presented to the King in person while in 
one of his immediate conditions of irresponsibility, 
and with his own hand he enacted the farce or tragedy 
of affixing his royal approval. Its passage by Parlia- 
ment had been an act of political insanity and any 
method of its approval could hardly be questioned. 
The Stamp Act provided that from and after the first 
day of November, 1765, " there shall be raised, levied, 
collected, and paid unto his Majesty, his heirs, and 
successors, throughout the colonies and plantations of 
America, which now are or hereafter may be, under 
the dominion of his Majesty, his heirs and succes- 
sors, etc." 

Then followed an enumeration by name of almost 
every conceivable legal document or conveyance, 
agreement or obligation, on land or sea, commercial 
parchment, paper or transaction, marriage license, 
bill, bond, note, book, pamphlet, almanac, newspaper 
or advertisement in any gazette, newspaper or pam- 
phlet, each for its legal validity requiring that it be 
written or printed upon stamped paper alone. 

Heavy penalties were prescribed for violation of 
any of the terms of the Act. 

Among other things, Sec. I. of the Act provided 
that upon " any register, entry, testimonial or certifi- 
cate of any degree taken in any university, academy, 
college or seminary of learning within the said colo- 
nies and plantations, a stamp duty of two pounds " 
should be paid. 

Hardly any provision excited more indignation here 
than did Sec. LVII., which declared that " Forfeitures 



—34— 

and penalties incurred after Sept. 29, 1765, for offen- 
ses against the Sugar Act, and for offenses against 
any other Act or Acts of Parliament relating to the 
trade or revenues of the said colonies or plantations, 
shall and may be prosecuted, sued for and recovered 
in any court of record, or in any Court of Admiralty 
in the respective colony or plantation where the 
offense shall be committed, or in any Court of Vice 
Admiralty appointed or to be appointed, and which 
shall have jurisdiction within such colony, plantation 
or place, . . ai the electioji of the informer or 
prosecutor!''' 

The annual Mutiny Act authorized the sending to 
the colonies such number of troops as might by the 
ministry at any time be deemed necessary. 

In April was also passed the Quartering-Act, which 
required the constables, tithingmen, magistrates and 
other civil officials of villages, towns, etc., in America, 
to billet and quarter the of&cers and soldiers in His 
Majesty's service, and provide food, drink and trans- 
portation for them, with penalties for any refusal. 
America will never forget the names of that generous 
and heroic minority who in Parliament pleaded the 
rights of the colonists as Knglishmen and the impol- 
icy of the proposed tyranny. 

It was after Charles Townshend, in his attempted 
argument upon the equity of taxation had said, 
" Will these children, planted by our care, nourished 
by our indulgence to strength and opulence, and pro- 
tected by our arms, grudge to contribute their mite 
to relieve us from the heavy burden under which we 
live?" — that Colonel Barre, who as the fellow soldier 



—35— 

of Wolfe liad stared tlie dangers and glories of 
Quebec, where he received a well-nigh fatal wound 
while supporting the body of his dying chief on that 
field, arose in Parliament and in impromptu but im- 
passioned eloquence, made that response now so 
familiar that it has become a classic of patriotism. 
It was in this speech that Colonel Barre applied to 
the abused but still loyal American colonists the title 
of " Sons of Liberty "—words which as soon as heard 
here gave name to an organization of great fearless- 
ness and influence in kindling the fires of resistance 
to the British crown. 

With the passage of the Stamp Act came to all the 
customs officials here imperative instructions to 
enforce to thfe letter the intolerable Navigation Acts. 
With the temptation of large personal emoluments, 
the acts of the various civil, military and naval offi- 
cials of the customs became a system of legalized 
tyranny and robbery. 

The post-offices being under British control, the 
utmost secrecy was necessary and patriotic riders car- 
ried from colony to colony matters of important intel- 
ligence. Reprints of the Stamp Act, entitled " The 
folly of England and ruin of America," were secretly 
scattered among the people. 

The colonists had met Charles Townshend's policy 
by an agreement not to import or consume British 
goods, and in a single year the amount of such 
exports from England to the colonies fell off 70 
per cent. Writing of these events, Trevelyan says : 
" All the British regiments which had ever sailed 
from Cork or Portsmouth could not force Americans 



-3^ 

to purchase Britisli merchandise. . . . One func- 
tion the soldiers might be called upon to discharge ; 
and it was evidently in the minds of the Cabinet 
which sent them out. As soon as the news of their 
arrival at Boston had reached London, the supporters 
of the Ministry in manifest concert with the Treasury 
Bench moved an address to the King, praying that 
persons who in the view of the royal governor of any 
colony had committed or failed to disclose acts of 
treason might be brought over to England and tried 
under a statute of Henry VIII." 

The ministry had already declared many of the 
colonial leaders guilty of treason and liable to be 
seized and transported three thousand miles for the 
farce of a trial with the certainty of never seeing 
their homes again. Men like Samuel Adams, James 
Otis, Stephen Johnson and other "trumpets of sedi- 
tion " well knew that under the old Tudor statute 
the noose of a halter was at no time far from their 
necks. 

In the village of Old Lyme then lived two men 
unbribable and unawed by power, who looked with 
eyes single to the welfare of their fellow men and to 
whose memories our commonwealth can never over- 
pay its debt of grateful remembrance. One was the 
Reverend Stephen Johnson and the other one of his 
parishioners, John McCurdy, a cultivated gentleman 
of high character and large property-interests, whose 
name belongs in that galaxy of noble Scotch-Irish- 
men, who in the Revolution so bravely in both forum 
and field served our country. At this time for pur- 
pose of acquiring new political information, McCurdy 



—37— 

quietly journeyed to New York, where in the inner 
circle of the Sons of Liberty he learned that certain 
important papers were being secretly passed from 
hand to hand for perusal. Obtaining a copy under 
strongest injunction of secrecy except with the most 
reliable, he hastened back to his home for consulta- 
tation with Stephen Johnson. The old, many-gabled 
colonial home of McCurdy still stands a quaint orna- 
ment to the village street of Lyme. Its furniture 
yet remains as when its floors felt the tread of Wash- 
ington, Lafayette and others, their compatriots of the 
Revolution. Could the walls of the library of that 
historic mansion give phonographic echo to the coun- 
sels and plans of Johnson and McCurdy for resistance 
to the Stamp Act, a rich contribution would be made 
to the annals of American patriotism. 

After secret consultation between Johnson, McCurdy 
and the New London printer, Timothy Green, in 
September, 1765, Johnson began the preparation of 
a series of papers intended to arouse the people and 
strengthen the minds of their delegates to the 
approaching Congress of colonial representatives in 
the city of New York. Each paper when written 
was carefully considered by Johnson and McCurdy 
and then the shrewd diplomacy of the latter secured 
its secret transmission to Green for publication in his 
New London Gazette. Johnson's first paper over the 
pen-name of " Addison " appeared in the Gazette on 
September 6th and was addressed " To the Freemen 
of the Colony of Connecticut." His second paper 
was addressed " To The Printers " doubtless with 
the object of its being reproduced in other colonial 



-38- 

newspapers. Weekly thereafter until November first 
appeared in the Gazette other of those impassioned 
and logical appeals and arguments from Johnson's 
pen, urging forcible resistance. Their dangerous 
authorship was known only to Johnson, McCurdy 
and Green. The excitement these papers created 
was unbounded and copies were carried by fleet riders 
to all the colonies from New Hampshire to Georgia 
and printed in their newspapers. These letters pre- 
sented every argument from the natural, constitu- 
tional and chartered rights of the people and were a 
mighty force in arousing and uniting them in defense 
of their liberties. A continuous chain of logical 
argument and appeal runs through them all, making 
brief extracts unfitting. They should be read as a 
whole, and the reader will find his soul stirred to 
admiring reverence for the heroic patriotism of their 
author. Perhaps the most philosophical and power- 
ful article from his pen was a sermon preached by 
him at Newport, R. I., on Public Fast Day, Dec. i8, 
1765, and entitled " Some Important Observations on 
Account of the Peculiar Circumstances of the Present 
Day." 

In all his writings, Johnson held and taught the 
belief later expressed by Jefferson that " The only 
firm basis of national liberty is the conviction that 
liberty is the gift of God." 

In the spring of 1766 the Stamp Act was repealed, 
but in such a way that its most offensive feature was 
reasserted. The King had stubbornly opposed any 
repeal except it was accompanied by a Declaratory 
Act asserting the right of the Parliament to pass and 



—39— 

enforce Acts for taxation of the colonies. For the 
financial burdens likely to result from the Stamp Act 
the colonies cared not so much. Their contention 
was against the right of the Parliament to tax them 
at all. The position of the colonists was well stated 
by their Congress of 1775 when it said to the people 
of Great Britain : *' We are accused of ' forgetting 
the allegiance which we owe to the power that has 
protected and sustained us.' . . . What allegiance is 
it that we forget ? Allegiance to parliament ? We 
never owed — we never owned it." The Declaratory 
Act was passed with result of widely renewing jeal- 
ousy and distrust of the crown. Though the Stamp 
Act had been thus repealed, there were other pend- 
ing questions pregnant with danger. The operation 
of the Mutiny Act had the year before been extended 
to the American colonies. It required the colonists 
at their own expense to furnish the British troops 
quartered upon them with " fire, candles, vinegar, salt, 
bedding, utensils for cooking, beer or cider and rum." 
More of new and grave constitutional questions 
arose between the crown and the colonies. While in 
England the Stamp Act had been largely a specula- 
tive question it was in America a vital one, for on its 
event the meanest settler felt his freedom and prop- 
erty to depend. The critical state of feeling here is 
somewhat shown in the diary of Captain John Mon- 
tresor, a British officer of engineers, who had been 
for many years in service here, and much of the time 
with the colonial troops in the French and Bnglish 
War. While on duty in the city of New York in 
1766, he records under date of February 24th in his 
diary : 



— ^40 — 

" Meetings as usual with the Sons of Liberty. 
Colonel Putnam, a Connecticut Colonel, sent advice 
to them from thence, that he would assist them with 
their Militia to the utmost lives and fortunes to 
prevent the Stamp Act being enforced in this Province 
or any other." 

** February 27th. The very Inadvertant Sons of 
Liberty make no scruples of publickly declaring that 
they are for shaking off the Yoke of Dependency of 
their Mother Country." 

** March 24th. By advice from Connecticut matters 
are arrived to greater lengths than in any other prov- 
ince, having allready provided themselves with a maga- 
zine for Arms, Ammunition, etc. — and ten thousand 
men at the shortest warning for opposing the Stamp 
Act, etc., all under the command of a Connecticut 
man called Col. Putnam, one that has received his 
Majesty's money, having been employed during the 
War as a Provincial Colonel." 

The self-poised yet indignant and fiery patriotism 
of the Lyme pastor, as expressed in his letters to the 
New London Gazette, had wrought its intended work 
in the minds of the people of Connecticut and the 
other colonies. Though a painful question to con- 
sider, the inevitable current of events was carrying 
them to the ultimate goal of political independence, 
even through blood. 

By request of the General Assembly of the Colony 
of Connecticut, Mr. Johnson preached on May 10, 
1770, the Anniversary Election Sermon for that year, 
taking his text from II Samuel, 23: 3. "The Rock 
of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must 



—41— 

be just, ruling in the fear of God." His theme was — 
*' Integrity and Piety the best Principles of a good 
Administration of Government." Arguing that civil 
government and the rights of the people under it are 
" the ordinance of God," he says : " These natural 
rights, civil and religious, are the gifts of God, as 
such sacred, nor may any but He, as original pro- 
prietor, resume them at pleasure." He further de- 
clares '' the good of the community to be the high 
end of government, and the supreme law of the State. 
... If the great and essential rights and privileges 
of the people be invaded and supplanted, usurped and 
destroyed, the design of government is subverted, and 
the end of it frustrated in the primary and funda- 
mental intention of it. . . . Under an administration 
formed by a spirit of righteousness effectual care will 
be taken, that the properties of subjects, in their 
great essential rights and privileges, they have by 
nature or constitution, be preserved to them inviolate. 
. . . When leaders of administration openly adopt 
arbitrary and offensive measures in a free state, gov- 
ernment is corrupt at its fountain, and the founda- 
tions of it are shaken." 

In Boston, New York, Philadelphia and other seaport 
towns previous to the Revolution, large tea-parties 
were had where no economy was shown in the quan- 
tity used of the fragrant leaf. The sturdy patriot- 
colonists refused to compromise with conscience by 
purchasing or using taxed tea. Not to be outdone 
by their larger neighbors, the people of Old Lyme 
had their tea-party, to which all the village was 
invited. On March i6, 1774, a peddler from Martha's 



—42— 

Vineyard came into the place on horseback with one 
hundred pounds of tea in his saddlebags. He was 
arrested and examined, and in the evening the Sons 
of Liberty assembled and built a bright fire on the 
village street near Mr. Johnson's church, and having 
committed the peddler's whole stock in trade to the 
flames, they buried the ashes on the spot. 

With unwearied watchfulness of events from the 
first introduction of the Stamp Bill until the outbreak 
of the Revolution, Mr. Johnson had followed the 
faithful work of his pastorate and other duties. The 
fires of political discontent smoldered until, fanned by 
a succession of tyrannies, at four o'clock on the morn- 
ing of Wednesday, April 19, 1775, the flames burst 
from the muzzles of guns at Lexington. Then in a 
moment an inchoate nation was born. At ten o'clock 
that morning the local Committee of Safety started a 
fleet rider to carry to the patriots of the Atlantic coast 
the news that the shedding of blood had begun. 
These were his credentials : 

" Watertown, 

Wednesday mor-nmg near 10 of the clock. 

To all friends of American liberty^ be it known that^ 
this morning before break of day^ a bj^igade consisting of 
about I ^000 or 1^200 m,en^ landed at Phip's farm^ at 
Cambridge^ and marched to Lexingto7t^ where they 
found a company of our colony militia in arms^ upon 
whom they fired without any provocation^ and killed six 
men and wounded four others. By an express from 
Boston^ we find another brigade are now upon their 
march from Bostofi^ supposed to be about i^ooo. The 



—43— 

bearer^ Trail Bissel^ is charged to alarm the country 
quite to Connecticut^ and all persons are desired to fur- 
nish him with fresh horses as they may be needed. I 
have spoken with several who have see7i the dead and 
wounded. Pray let the delegates from this colony to 
Co7inecticut see this; they know Colonel Foster, of 
Brookfield^ one of the delegates. 

J, Palmer, 
One of the Committee of S. K." {Safety.) 

Eacli Committee of Safety on tlie route of this 
spirited messenger indorsed upon his credentials the 
date and hour of his arrival, thus showing how far 
and fast he had ridden. Before the close of April 
19th he reached Worcester, Mass. At 4 p. M. of 
Thursday he was at Norwich, Conn., and at New 
London at 7 o'clock the same evening. At one 
o'clock on Friday morning he was at the door of 
Stephen Johnson in Old Lyme ; at 10 o'clock of that 
forenoon at Guilford ; at noon at Branford ; in after- 
noon at New Haven and Milford, and at 8 o'clock on 
Saturday morning at Fairfield. Worn with the 
intense physical strain, but unfaltering, the gallant 
rider pressed on until his horse, panting and flecked 
with foam, dashed down the old Bowery Road into 
Broadway, New York, on Sunday morning at the 
hour when people were assembling for public worship. 
Drawing rein at the door of the rooms of the Commit- 
tee of Safety, where Sears, Lamb, MacDougall, and 
other patriots were gathered, Bissel presented his 
credentials. At 4 o'clock that afternoon he crossed 
the river into New Jersey, and pushed on with his 



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miglity message. At 2 o'clock on Monday morning 
lie arrived at New Brunswick, and four hours later 
was at the home in Princeton of the sterling patriot, 
Dr. John Witherspoon, President of the College of 
New Jersey. By 9 o'clock of the same morning he 
was at Trenton, and at 5 o'clock that afternoon his 
credentials were indorsed at Philadelphia. All honor 
to Paul Revere, famed in song and story, but his gal- 
lant ride pales before that of the unsung hero. Trail 
Bissel. 

The patriots of the colonies from Boston to Phila- 
delphia at once sprang to arms and hurried their 
minute men to the scene of battle. Here in Connec- 
ticut as elsewhere were mothers of the Gracchi still 
living. One gentlewoman of Connecticut encouraged 
her six sons and eleven grandsons to hasten to the 
field, telling them to come back with honor or not at 
all. The patriot Johnson was now as ready for ser- 
vice in the field as he had been in the forum. When 
the fleet rider brought to Old Lyme word of the 
affair at Lexington, it required but three days for 
the rallying of one hundred men and their start to 
Boston. In a few days one of his parishioners, a 
lieutenant of the first company, returned to Lyme 
and recruited a second company, which was attached 
to the Sixth Connecticut Continental Regiment, 
commanded by Colonel Samuel Holden Parsons and 
reached Boston in time for the battle of Bunker 
Hill, where Stephen Johnson was present as Chaplain 
of the regiment. There, along the lines at Roxbury, 
and wherever duty or the exigencies of the service 
demanded, his presence and voice gave stimulus to 



—45— 

the unfailing courage and fidelity of the living as well 
as comfort to the wounded and dying of his parish- 
ioners and other compatriots in the field. During the 
whole long struggle he was by both pen and person 
an unwearied patriot. It was given him to see the 
crowning of his work in the surrender at Yorktown 
and the Treaty of Peace in 1783. He continued his 
pastorate of forty years with the church of Old Lyme 
until at his death, November 8, 1786, he was laid to 
rest in the old Duck River burying ground. Though 
unremembered by many, his name is preserved in his 
country's annals. Recalling the fact that from his 
pen came the first printed article pointing to unquali- 
fied resistance to the tyranny of the British crown, 
we leave him at rest with a sufficient epitaph in the 
words of George Bancroft, the historian, who says, 
" Of that venerable band who nursed the flame of 
piety and civil freedom, none did better service than 
the American-born Stephen Johnson, the sincere and 
fervid pastor of the First Church of Lyme." 



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